Concurrency in Ada [Paperback]

Alan Burns (Author), Andy Wellings (Author), John Barns (Foreword)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 052162911X | ISBN-13: 978-0521629119 | Publication Date: March 13, 1998 | Edition: 2

A major feature of the Ada programming language is the facilities it provides for concurrent programming. In this book, Alan Burns and Andy Wellings provide a thorough and self-contained account of concurrent programming in Ada, and show users how to harness the full power of the language. Starting with an overview of the nonconcurrent features of Ada, the authors examine in detail the uses of concurrent programming and the inherent difficulties in providing interprocess communication. They introduce the Ada tasking model, and explain system programming, real-time issues, distribution, object-oriented programming, and reuse. This is the first book to deal with concurrent features in the new Ada standard, and it offers practical advice to both programmers working with embedded systems and those interested more broadly in the development of programming languages. Many otherwise inaccessible issues are probed in depth, making this book invaluable to professional software engineers and advanced students of programming alike. Every Ada programmer will find it essential reading and a primary reference work.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"It is an intellectual delight and mandatory reading for Ada professionals involved in embedded systems....Overall, this book is significant. The authors do not hold back in any way. They deal with the full scope of Ada for concurrent programming and demonstrate that they understand it thoroughly. They assess its strengths and weaknesses, and show how to take full advantage of its capabilities. Real-time software engineers should read this book carefully to view the full potential of the Ada language for handling concurrency. Once read, it will remain close at hand as a reference manual for design techniques." R.P. Leavitt, Computing Reviews

"A thorough and scholarly review of the new language [Ada 95]. Recommended." M.B. Gokhale, Choice

"This book proved to be a useful source of information and examples on new Ada features for my Ada-based real-time systems class. It is also a good textbook for a practically oriented course on concurrency...." Janusz Zalewski, IEEE Software

Book Description

A major feature of the Ada programming language is the facilities it provides for concurrent programming. Alan Burns and Andy Wellings provide here a thorough and self-contained account of concurrent programming in Ada, and show even beginning users how to harness the full power of the whole language. This is the first book which deals with concurrent features in the new Ada standard. Every Ada programmer, whether novice or expert, will find it essential reading and a primary reference work.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 442 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press; 2 edition (March 13, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 052162911X
• ISBN-13: 978-0521629119
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,516,354 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The "gold standard" for Ada 2005 in concurrent and real-time apps, January 28, 2008

By 

Patrick Rogers (Friendswood, Texas) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Concurrent and Real-Time Programming in Ada (Hardcover)

Fully harnessing multi-core processors requires concurrent programming, yet most mainstream languages have little support or do so with poor portability. Well-written concurrent Ada programs can be extremely portable and support multi-core and multiple processors automatically. This book explores, in-depth, the concurrent programming ("tasking") part of the Ada language. The authors then show how the concurrent programming facilities of Ada are augmented by the language to support real-time programming. These standard real-time facilities are state-of-the-art, extending, for example, beyond the POSIX real-time facilities in their expressive power.

The book first establishes the necessary foundation for understanding concurrent programming by explaining the possible problems (e.g., deadlocks and race conditions) and highlighting some of the mechanisms traditionally used in concurrent programming, such as semaphores and message-passing.

The tasking part of Ada is then covered in full detail, necessarily including interactions with some other parts of the language, such as exceptions, but also including interactions with the Ada object-oriented language facilities. The implementations of a number of reusable concurrency abstractions serve to illustrate the use of the tasking features.

The authors next lay another foundation, this time for scheduling in real-time systems, and show how Ada directly supports the common approaches. Both fixed-priority and dynamic-priority dispatching are supported by Ada and these are covered in detail. Ada 2005 also defines a number of time-related abstractions, such as a monotonic clock and timing events, and these are also covered completely. As in the concurrent programming part of the book, a number of reusable abstractions are implemented; in this section they illustrate the real-time language facilities. A discussion of the popular Ravenscar Profile, adopted by some other languages, is included.

No language is perfect and Ada is no exception. The tasking part of Ada 83 was particularly controversial in the domain of real-time systems. Ada 95 addressed many of these issues and added some new ones. Ada 2005 does the same. These issues are not ignored in the book.

I own 46 books on Ada (not counting older editions of some of them), gathered over 27 years of applying the language. Some are excellent and some not, but this one is highly prized. I highly recommend it to professionals and students alike.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The definitive work on concurrency in Ada, February 8, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Concurrency in Ada (Paperback)

By far the best on the subject. Offers complete coverage of any aspect of concurrency with Ada, including real-time and distributed programming issues. Burns and Wellings are the acknowledged experts on this topic.

The best aspect of the book is the analysis of features and their interactions, providing a depth not available in other texts covering the entire language.

Assumes you know some Ada, but includes an introduction to the sequential part of the language.

I own quite a few books on Ada; this is the one to get if you want the details of Ada concurrency.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars ESSENTIAL & EXCELLENT for every PROFESSIONAL PROGRAMMER, July 12, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Concurrency in Ada (Hardcover)

Ada has been one of few languages which provides facilities for concurrent programming, but readings for the feature had been limited. This book is not only the first but also an excellent guide to the capability of the new Ada standard.

It covers,

1.�@The Ada Language

2. The Nature and Uses of Concurrent Programming

3. Inter-Process Communication

4. Ada Task Types and Objects

5. The Rendezvous

6. The Select Statement and the Rendezvous

7. Protected Objects and Data-Oriented Communication

8. Avoidance Synchronisation and the Requeue Facility

9. Using Protected Objects as Building Blocks

10. Exceptions, Abort and Asyncronous Transfer of Control

11. Tasking and System Programming

12. Real-Time Programming

13. Object-Oriented Programming and Tasking

14. Distributed Systems

15. Conclusion

Not only Ada programmers, but also all professonal software engineers who design real-time, embedded systems, advanced students of computer science, and even beginners should find it quite useful.

I've read the original print published in 1995, which has been out-of-print.

I am so happy to know it is now to be RE-PRINTed, and every programmers would be.